Caged Eagle
by ivanovandevotee
Summary: AU. Susan has been taken by the Corps after leaving B5, and now someone they believed was dead has come back to offer her friends a chance to help her remember the truth. But will she want to remember a life with so much pain? AUness fully explained insid
1. Traitor

**Author's note:** Years ago I read a story in which Susan was taken by the Corps, and it was so cruel I just had to write her out of it to get that story out of my head. Also, one aspect of the Susan/Talia relationship didn't make sense to me. If they did have a physical relationship in "Divided Loyalties" as JMS has said, Talia would have known about Susan being a telepath. So these are my ideas about why the Corps didn't know about Susan right after Divided Loyalties, and the reason behind Bester's smirk in "Ship of Tears.

Set Season 5 time but no Lochley.

Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **The whole Babylon 5 universe belongs to J. Michael Straczynski, I only play in it from time to time and do not make any money from it.

**Chapter One: Traitor**

It was cold. That's what John noticed the most. True, temperature was more or less constant on a space station, but ever since that terrible call had come through in his quarters two months ago a cold wind seemed to follow him, curling round his heart andchilling it to the core.

It had been a good day, and he had at first been delighted to see the face of his old friend "Mackie" MacDougan, whom he hadn't seen since Mackie had been given a Military Advisor position soon after the war.

"Mackie! Well I'll be damned! How are things with the Presidential Office?"

But his happy grin had died when he noticed the look on Mackie's normally imperturbably confident face. He couldn't meet John's eyes, and his hands twitched nervously. The bigger man cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Hey, John. Look, I don't really know how to say this…"

John swallowed hard, desperately trying to think what could possibly have happened to affect his old teacher this badly.

"Well whatever it is, Mackie, I think I'd prefer to hear it from you."

This seemed to galvanize Mackie, and he took a deep breath and stood a little straighter.

"The Psi Corps have taken Susan, John. She was called to Geneva for a briefing, and Bester and some cronies were waiting in General Sutton's office. It turns out she was a telepath all this time. She fought like hell John, but they knocked her out from behind. I was there to drop off a report and I saw it all. I'm sorry, John. I don't know how they found out."

But as John Sheridan sank numbly into a chair, he had known. Oh yes, he knew. For a moment all he could see was Susan's face from three years ago, eyes showing an awful mix of disbelief, anger and fear as she asked him,

"You're not going to do this to me, are you?"

But he had done it. He had cajoled and persuaded her, then sent her to face her most deadly enemy all alone, a frightened and untrained barely-P1 against the mercilessly manipulative sheer power of the Psi Cop who embodied the demon of her childhood. And afterwards, when she had confided her fear about Bester's strange smirk after she had slapped him, he had reassured her with a smile, putting it down to a combination of her fears and Bester's twisted sense of humour.

He knew better now, after two months of dreams filled with terrible images of his friend. At first, there would only be the memory of when Susan had divulged her secret, sitting huddled in a corner of his couch like a frightened child hiding from the monsters under the bed. He thought he could hear her whisper, over and over:

"No. Don't do this to me. I'm scared."

Then the scene would change, and she would be manacled to a chair in a dark room, and he would hear her scream as a faceless man injected her. And in the last moment before she lost consciousness, eyes that held a world of confusion and hurt would lock with his, and her voice would echo without sound:

"Why did you let them take me!? I thought you would keep me safe……"

Things got twenty times worse once a contact had somehow found out that Susan had proved to be a P12. After that, night after night the dream ended with Susan, dressed in the raven-black of a Psi Cop, coolly training a PPG on his heart. And her lip would curl as she uttered a single word……and fired.

"Traitor."


	2. Two Ghosts

**Author's Note: **Chapter 2, enjoy! I held it back on purpose till I knew if anyone wanted to read it. But seriously, people. Over 100 hits and only 2 reviews? Please, don't torture me like that! Tell me what's good and what ain't in this story of mine, or I'll leave you dangling off the edge of a cliffie the size of the Pit of Z'ha'dum! You have been warned!!

**Disclaimer: **Don't own anything, apart from my own brain, and don't make a penny. Long live JMS!

**Chapter Two: Two Ghosts**

The fire was gone. The moment that Michael caught sight of his friend's face, his breath froze in his throat. Her infamously uncontrollable fire had died, leaving a face carved from stone with ice chips embedded in the eyes. And here she was, striding in through Customs at the side of Alfred Bester, wearing the uniform and expression that had once invoked a blaze of revulsion. Michael moved to meet them, practically holding his breath in an effort to keep a handle on this truly sick scenario. Bester's face was a study in thinly-veiled gloating mirth as he handed over his ID.

"Ah, Mr Garibaldi, I expected to see you. I believe you know my new partner, Ms. Ivanova?"

"Mundane" though he was, Mr Garibaldi could see quite clearly that Bester was mentally laughing his head off at the completeness of his victory, but he did need an enormous amount of self-control not to attempt to rip that same head from its' shoulders, Asimov or no Asimov. Instead he turned and forced himself to look into Susan's empty face as he took her card.

"Susan, it's……good to see you."

His eyes swept her face, searching desperately for some sign of the old Ivanova, some hint of a cry for rescue. Nothing.

"Good to see you too, Michael."

The voice was perfectly content, blandly neutral with barely any personality. Something collapsed inside Michael. They had her, lock, stock and soul.

"I'll take you to the President."

John Sheridan's fist slammed into the desktop. "Dammit people, we _cannot _stand by and watch this!" _I can't stand by and watch my failure, _he thought as he looked round at the group ranged in his office to deal with this crisis. Garibaldi, looking as infuriated and sickened as he felt, had brought Bester in and listened to the details of his planned Rogue-hunt in Downbelow. As Bester had been informed that the President "needed time to consider" and escorted to quarters, his sly smile made John have to forcibly fight off the red mist. Zack Allen, a man who had grown into a fine successor when Michael had become Presidential Security Advisor, had looked lost in his own thoughts until Sheridan's outburst. And Delenn. The woman who was the centre of his existence had had her eyes locked on him since she had come in, and her face was full of sympathy and understanding of his guilt and pain. He had no idea what he would do without her arms and her voice when he woke, gasping and terrified, from his nightmares. All of them had cared for Susan in their own way, and all of them were hurt by what she had been forced to become.

"As far as I am concerned, Captain Ivanova has been forcibly taken _prisoner_ by the Psi Corps," he continued, attempting a calmer tone, "and I cannot conscionably allow this situation to continue."

Michael paced like a caged lion, his voice rising in frustration. "Sir, I know more than anyone else in this room what it's like to have Psi Corps screw with your brain, and seeing Susan like that is killing me too, but what the hell do we do? Our hands are tied! The Interstellar Alliance treaty clearly states that each government has the right to govern its people by its' own laws, and Psi Corps has been taking people in by force for years!"

This pulled John up short, shocked at the note of defeat in his normally dogged friend's face. He shook himself for starting to forget what Michael had been through, though he realised probably none of them would ever understand how deeply the effects truly ran. He took a deep breath, deflated and small now without his righteous anger. He wasn't The President right now, with a straight back and a smooth plan of action. He was just John, scrabbling for a way to save a friend.

"I know, Michael, and I don't have the answer. I just-"

And that's when the answer walked in the door.

A spatter of running feet in the hallway, a gasp of relief, and there she was. It looked as if it had been a while since she had been able to dress as sharply as she used, but her winter-sky eyes and white gold hair still marked her out. Michael looked as if his eyes would fall out.

"My God! Talia!"


End file.
